Trump: I wanted to ‘get all my personal things out’ of classified doc boxes ‘and I was very busy’
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump suggested Monday that he just didn’t have time to comply with a federal subpoena for his White House documents, claiming he needed to “go through the boxes and get all my personal things out … and I was very busy.”
Trump, 77, gave the bizarre explanation for hiding dozens of boxes containing classified papers to Fox News “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier in an interview six days after his arraignment on 37 federal criminal counts.
“Why not just hand them over [to the National Archives]?” Baier asked Trump.
“Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy as you’ve sort of seen,” Trump replied.
“Yeah, but according to the indictment, you then tell this aide [Walt Nauta] to move to other locations after telling your lawyers to say you’d fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn’t,” Baier pressed.
“Before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out,” Trump insisted.
“These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.”
Nauta was indicted as a co-conspirator for allegedly helping Trump shift boxes of documents that had been sent to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., as he left office in January 2021.
Trump insisted following an Aug. 8, 2022, FBI raid on his home that he had a right to keep the records and argued that he had declassified the hoard of paperwork — without presenting evidence of a written order.
“The only way NARA could ever get this stuff, this back, would be [to say] ‘Please, please, please, could we have it back?'” the former president insisted Monday.
“Because they have –“
“They did ask for it,” Baier interjected.
“No,” Trump responded.
“And then I gave them some [in January 2022].“
“And then they said they went to DOJ to subpoena you to get it,” the anchor went on.
“Which they’ve never done before,” Trump responded.
The former president and frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination said last week during a post-arrest speech at his Bedminster, NJ, golf course that he kept the records because he hadn’t gotten around to reviewing their contents, rather than for a more nefarious reason.
Prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith have not alleged a specific motive for Trump to keep classified information, but former Attorney General Bill Barr speculated Monday that it was “an act of self-assertion merely to gratify his ego.”
Trump has argued that he faces a double standard compared to President Biden, whose alleged mishandling of classified information dating to his Senate years and vice presidency is under investigation by special counsel Robert Hur.
Classified records were found at Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home, including in a garage next to his Corvette, as well as at a DC office building were he worked before running to president.
Unlike Trump’s Palm Beach resort, Biden’s document repositories lacked Secret Service protection during a period of time when the documents were present.
However, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago frequently hosted public events and was the site of suspected foreign infiltration during his presidency.
Trump is the first former president to face federal criminal charges.
He also was arraigned April 4 in New York on state charges related to 2016 hush money payments under a novel legal theory proposed by District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
